APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Tag Archives: History of Software Engineering
Ubiquitous computing
I, along with many others, have written about the influence of Xerox PARC on Apple. The NeXT workstation was a great example of getting an approximation to the Smalltalk concept out using off-the-shelf parts, and Jobs often presaged iCloud with … Continue reading
Episode 25: A Theory of Software Engineering
In fact, while this is about a theory of software engineering, that doesn’t enter until the end of the show. Most of it is an attempt to incorrectly summarise the history of software engineering through analogy to the history of … Continue reading
Episode 20: what do we know about software engineering?
I explain the gap between episodes 19 and 20, and ask whether any of the practices we follow in software engineering are defensible. Derek Jones: Evidence-based software engineering Laurent Bossavit: The Leprechauns of Software Engineering An Apology to Readers of … Continue reading
Discipline doesn’t scale
If programmers were just more disciplined, more professional, they’d write better software. All they need is a code of conduct telling them how to work like those of us who’ve worked it out. The above statement is true, which is … Continue reading
Episode 18: the pink plane
A response to my own post, What Smalltalk was not over at De Programmatica Ipsum. Some relevant links: The Booch Method Rebecca Wirfs-Brock’s books Applying UML and Patterns Also, I mentioned the Dos Amigans twitch stream, where Steven Baker and … Continue reading
The manifesto for anarchic software development
Go on, read the manifesto again. You’ll see that it’s a manifesto for anarchism, for people coming together and contributing equally toward solving problems. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. The best architectures, requirements, … Continue reading
Episode 13: The Open-Closed Principle
In this episode, I discuss Bertrand Meyer’s Open-Closed Principle.
Episode 12: No Silver Bullets
Having over-run on the previous episode, here’s the end of it, where I actually get as far as discussing No Silver Bullet—Essence and Accident in Software Engineering. This is a really great article about how no single improvement to software … Continue reading
Episode 11: The Monocle Math-Myth
In this episode I talk about The Mythical Man-Month and Brooks’s Law, even though I intended to talk about No Silver Bullet by the same author. Next time. Maybe. Exploratory experimental studies comparing online and offline programming performance, a.k.a. the … Continue reading
So, what’s the plan? Part 2: what will the plan be?
In Part One, I explored the time of transition from Mac OS 8 to Mac OS X (not a typo: Mac OS 9 came out during the transition period). From a software development perspective, this included the Carbon and Cocoa … Continue reading
